Pay To Win - Alienates the casual gamer
With the growing number of free-to-play titles in the market right now, it is very easy for games to fall into the pay-to-win trap, either accidentally through bad design of the items available for sale or purposely in the pursuit of more money. Some games force the player to buy items by putting an unreasonable barrier in front of a player who wants to earn it through game play. These strategies are particularly unfair when used in multiplayer games or competitive games. Pay-to-win strategies will ultimately alienate casual gamers who do not participate in the game's economy. Players who spend money on items can become overly powerful and ruin the experience for the other players leading to no win situations for anyone except the players who've paid. Pay to win also leads to a large barrier of entry for any new players who enter the ecosystem. Examples H1Z1 This post-apocalyptic MMO style zombie shooter game introduced a new mechanic after launch where players could pay extra to get exclusive guns and ammunition dropped into their game through airdrops. In a game all about ammo conservation and resource management, adding this mechanic meant that people who could afford these drops became extremely powerful and had an overwhelming affect on the other players playing in the shared world. Here's a link to an article discussing this issue. Clash Royale Clash Royale is a arena battle game for mobile devices. The game lets you build decks with card/units you unlock in a variety of ways. You can gain cards through winning matches, or by spending in-game currency. However, Clash Royale also offer the ability to buy gold or gems which allow players to purchase cards that allow them to have better decks than their opponents. This is not game breaking as it is possible to compete without spending real money but it can lead to frustrating games where you loose only because your opponent had disposable income to throw at the game. Travian Several years ago I used to play this online resource management / empire building game. The objective was to expand your city before acquiring enough resources to send out settlers to found another city. It was fun... until the player that decided waiting the standard amount of time to do some expensive action decided to spend money to get "premium currency" and raided your village. You see, in Travian players could spend money to advance constructions instantly. Some constructions would take days to complete, and players willing to spend money to get over those hurdles quickly reached the top with their "unjust" gains. They would then easily wipe you out, destroy your villages, and even claim some of them for themselves via the conquering technique. This made the game very Pay-to-Win and, sadly, lost my interest due to how unfair it became. Candy Crush Even though it is possible to play Candy Crush without spending money, it becomes more and more attempting to spend money as one progresses through the levels. The game has more than 300 levels and winning the game depends a lot on luck. Buying boosters and extra moves greatly increases the chance to win each level and there's no upper limit to the amount of money that could be spent. Black Ops 3 Call of Duty: Black ops 3 was considered one of the biggest pay-to-win shooters. After introduction of supply drops in advanced warfare which was supposed to be only for people to obtain new cosmetic materials, they also started introducing new weapons which were only obtainable through buying and opening supply drops. According to definition of pay-to-win a game becomes pay-to-win if it offers an item to the players for money which changes the gameplay. And the weapons which people got in the supply drops were more lethal and had more dps. This was so frustrating for the players who did not spend any money on supply drops. IMG: In the Image you can see an epic weapon which dropped 'only from those supply drops' and had the ability to one-shot an opponent and had deadly melee range.